PARIS, 24 April 2004 — A French administrative tribunal of Lyons has told the French government that it erred in expelling controversial Imam, Abdelkader Bouziane, a 25-year resident of France, to Algeria and that the arrest and expulsion was “blemished with irregularities.”
Bouziane, the 52-year-old Imam of a radical Muslim mosque located in the suburb of Venissieux, “should never have been expelled from France,” the tribunal of Lyons announced, claiming that the proper procedures “had not been respected.”
The decision to suspend the expulsion comes as a major blow to the French justice and interior ministries, who had chosen Bouziane’s expulsion as the first major decision to be undertaken by their respective heads, Dominique Perben and Dominique de Villepin, under the newly reshuffled government of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
The imam’s attorney, Mahmoud Hebia, welcomed the decision but was unsure whether his client, presently in Algiers, would be allowed to immediately return to France. ”
Hebia claimed the French authorities had overwhelmed his client with charges of being a “terrorist who called for a Jihad against nonbelievers.” The allegations were based on an anonymous document provided by the Renseignements generaux (RG), an intelligence-gathering organization under the aegis of the French Interior Ministry.
Only April 20, Justice Minister Perben said that he’d decided to prosecute Bouziane, the popular Imam of the Association E.S. Salem mosque in the Venissieux suburb of Lyons because of a controversial interview he gave to a regional magazine - Lyon Mag. In the interview Bouziane said he approved the beating of women in France - “certainly by hitting them not on the face, but rather in the legs or on the stomach.” The imam said that their husbands had the right to hit them if found out they were seeing another man.
Bouziane caused another flurry after refusing to condemn Osama Bin Laden, noting that “I can’t condemn him, as long as there is no proof it was really he who organized the attacks in New York (Sept 11, 2001) on in Madrid (March 11, 2004).” In another statement he said, “An Islamic republic would be a good thing for France because people would be happier if they were allowed to become closer to Allah.”
Perben said that such statements had prompted the order for a criminal complaint against Bouziane.
